To Mike Mossholder,
Chief Marketing Officer, Cleveland Browns
Despite, by most measures, a poor onfield performance by our product, we have successfully navigated a zero win season and a pandemic without sacrificing ticket sale volume. We sold out every home game in 2021, our average attendance was 67,431 (72,000 capacity), and the average ticket price rose to $100.52, though still below the league average. Our loyal fanbase presents us with an opportunity to increase revenue through ticket sales without losing attendance.
After the unexpected turbulence of COVID, we’ve seen a renewed demand for live football and an increased willingness to pay for it as reflected by an increase in league-wide attendance and ticket prices following the 2020 season. We should increase ticket prices and allocate marketing budget to promote our ticket packages through social media to a targeted segment willing to absorb the pricing increase.
Figure 1 shows the relationship between ticket price and home attendance for the Browns (in orange) relative to the rest of the league from 2008 to 2021. Notice first that our ticket prices have remained lower than most of the other teams in the league, even as the entire NFL raised ticket prices following COVID. Most importantly, with the exception of 2015-2016, when Browns’ ticket prices increased, we did not see a drop in attendance. This holds true for most other teams as well, indicating that demand is rather inelastic. This leads us to recommend increasing ticket prices.
Figure 2 shows the Browns average home attendance as a proportion of the average total NFL attendance between 2008-2021. Our attendance has been consistently lower than the league average, even as ticket sales remain high. This may be in part to poor performance in recent years, but we should allocate adequate resources to ensure we are not only selling tickets, but driving fans to actually show up for the game.
Hovering over different years will show NFL total average attendance (blue) and portion belonging to The Browns average attendance (orange).
In an effort to reinforce the idea that we are not marketing our tickets at a high enough price, note Figure 3 below. We see that our average ticket price has remained below the league average since 2006, representing 15 seasons of lost potential revenue. We have closed the gap in the last two seasons, but even as of 2021, the difference in average ticket price between us and the league was -$6.53. With 72,000 seats, that still represents $470,160 in lost potential revenue per game by not simply meeting league average.
With the exception of 2016 & 2017 when our team won but a single game, our fan base has remained exceptionally loyal, selling out tickets season after season. Even following those dismal two years, ticket sales have rebounded and our tickets sell out for every home game (regardless of how many people actually attend). Given this, it becomes clear that we are not working closely enough with our ticket sales team to increase prices. As made clear by the figures above, we have lagged the NFL average ticket price per game for every year from 2006-2021. Notice that in 2018, Browns average tickets lagged the NFL average by nearly $34. At our current capacity of 72,000, simply matching the average price would have resulted in ~$2.4mil in additional ticket revenue per game. We should work with sales to increase the price per ticket, while allocating additional budget to a marketing campaign directed at businesses on Twitter looking to entertain their clients at sporting events. By targeting this segment on Twitter, who may be more likely to absorb the increase, we insulate ourselves from the casual fan that may be negatively responsive to an increase in price.
E. (2021a, June 10). The Influence of Social media in Sport Marketing. Marbella International University Centre. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://miuc.org/influence-social-media-sport-marketing/
Francis, S. (2020, March 9). Value Pricing and Competition in the NFL. Strategic Pricing Solutions. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://stratpricing.com/value-pricing-and-competition-in-the-nfl/
Henry, Z. (2018, August 22). Marketing Mix Of NFL. Case48. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.case48.com/case/NFL-Marketing-Mix-18035
O. (2021b, March 13). NFL Teams – Who Is Winning in Social Media? Odysci. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.odysci.com/en/blog/nfl-teams-who-is-winning-in-social-media/
Statista. (2021a, December 1). Average ticket price National Football League games 2006–2021. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/193425/average-ticket-price-in-the-nfl-since-2006/
Statista. (2021b, December 7). Average ticket price of the Cleveland Browns 2006–2021. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/197966/nfl-average-ticket-price-for-cleveland-browns-games-since-2006/
Statista. (2021c, December 8). Average ticket price in the NFL by team 2021. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/193595/average-ticket-price-in-the-nfl-by-team/
Statista. (2022a, January 13). Total average home attendance per team in the National Football League 2005–2021. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/193629/average-regular-season-home-attendance-per-team-in-the-nfl-since-2005/
Statista. (2022b, February 9). Average regular season home attendance of
the Cleveland Browns 2008–2021. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/250046/average-home-attendance-of-the-cleveland-browns/
Statista. (2022c, March 9). Cleveland Browns number of Facebook fans/Twitter followers 2012–2022. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/334222/facebook-fans-twitter-followers-of-cleveland-browns/
Strategy. (2020, June 4). Marketing Strategy : Bill Belichick and the Cleveland Browns Case Study Solution. EMBA Pro for Executive MBA Professionals. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://embapro.com/frontpage/marketingstrategyanalysis/10145-belichick-browns
## # A tibble: 5 × 2
## `Member Name` `Contribution Score`
## <chr> <dbl>
## 1 MacRae, Alexander 10
## 2 Zhang,Jingying 10
## 3 Suwannama,Kanyarat 10
## 4 Jayakrishnan, Meghna 10
## 5 Hong, Wei Lee 10